News from the Library of Congress

March 24, 1999

Washingtonians to Read Favorite Poems at the
Library of Congress

Famous Washingtonians will read some of their favorite
poems at 6:45 p.m. April 7 in the Coolidge Auditorium
on the ground floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building,
10 First St. S.E. as part of Poet Laureate Robert
Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project. The program, presented
under the auspices of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall
Poetry and Literature Fund, has been organized by 1999
Witter Bynner Fellow David Gewanter. Tickets are not
required.

The readers will include members of Congress,
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington; Philip
Bobbitt, who created the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt
National Prize for Poetry; Patch Adams, M.D., author
of Gesundheit!: Bringing Good Health to You, the
Medical System, and Society Through Physician Service,
Complementary Therapies, Humor, and Joy and the
subject of a recent motion picture; Harold Varmus,
Director of the National Institutes of Health; Cliff
Becker, Director of the Literature Program at the
National Endowment for the Arts; and journalists.

At 5 p.m. that evening in the Coolidge Auditorium, Mr.
Pinsky and poets Nikki Grimes and Judith Viorst, plus
young poets from the Washington area, will inaugurate
Young People's Poetry Week with poetry readings. This
event is sponsored by the Center for the Book in the
Library of Congress, the Library's Poetry and
Literature Office, the Children's Book Council, the
District Lines Poetry Project and the Children's
Literature Center in the Library of Congress.

The 6:45 p.m. Favorite Poem reading is part of Mr.
Pinsky's main undertaking as Poet Laureate, the
Favorite Poem Project. Mr. Pinsky is selecting a broad
cross section of Americans reading their favorite
poems aloud as part of the Library's Bicentennial. In
the year 2000, when the Library celebrates its 200th
birthday, Mr. Pinsky will present 200 video and 1,000
audio tapes of Favorite Poem readings to the Library
for its Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature as
one of the Library's birthday gifts to the nation.
These readings by Americans will augment the existing
Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, which has
recordings of 2,000 poets and authors reading their
work. Among them are Robert Penn Warren, Robert Frost,
Maxine Kumin and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Mr. Pinsky launched the Favorite Poem Project last
year to create audio and video archives of Americans
of all ages, backgrounds, and walks of life reading
aloud their favorite poems. It is rooted in Mr.
Pinsky's belief that poetry is meant to be read aloud.

"The archives will be a record at the end of the
millennium of what we choose and what we do with our
voices and faces, when asked to say aloud a poem that
we love," said Mr. Pinsky, who was first appointed
Poet Laureate by Dr. Billington in 1997 and
reappointed in 1998.

The Favorite Poem Project's two long-term goals are to
promote reading and appreciation of poetry and to
encourage the teaching of poetry in schools
nationwide. Many Favorite Poem readings have occurred
throughout the country in the past two years. The
reading on April 7 is the second annual Favorite Poem
program presented at the Library of Congress and
organized by Mr. Gewanter.

"It will be a gift to the nation's future: an archive
that may come to represent, in a form both individual
and public, the collective cultural consciousness of
the American people at the turn of the century," said
Mr. Pinsky, a professor of English and creative
writing at Boston University.